he arrived at a conception of the total, the ideal, which left a
clear opportunity for just another figure. "Just one more--to
round it off; just one more, just one," continued to hum in his
head. There was a strange confusion in the thought, for he felt
the day to be near when he too should be one of the Others. What
in this event would the Others matter to him, since they only
mattered to the living? Even as one of the Dead what would his
altar matter to him, since his particular dream of keeping it up
had melted away? What had harmony to do with the case if his
lights were all to be quenched? What he had hoped for was an
instituted thing. He might perpetuate it on some other pretext,
but his special meaning would have dropped. This meaning was to
have lasted with the life of the one other person who understood
it.

In March he had an illness during which he spent a fortnight in
bed, and when he revived a little he was told of two things that
had happened. One was that a lady whose name was not known to the
servants (she left none) had been three times to ask about him; the
other was that in his sleep and on an occasion when his mind
evidently wandered he was heard to murmur again and again: "Just
one more--just one." As soon as he found himself able to go out,
and before the doctor in attendance had pronounced him so, he drove
to see the lady who had come to ask about him. She was not at
home; but this gave him the opportunity, before his strength should
fall again, to take his way to the church. He entered it alone; he
had declined, in a happy manner he possessed of being able to
decline effectively, the company of his servant or of a nurse. He
knew now perfectly what these good people thought; they had
discovered his clandestine connexion, the magnet that had drawn him